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Power to the People

By Brodie Blades – Senior Planner

The votes are in and being tallied for Vancouver’s
recent transit referendum. Citizens of the west-coast Canadian city were asked whether
they supported a 0.5 per cent increase
to the existing state sales tax for the funding of transit infrastructure.

If successful, the increase will fund a range of transit
infrastructure investments across metropolitan Vancouver, including bridge
replacements, new subway lines, a new light rail system, enhanced bus services
and frequency as well as enhanced ferry services. This would effectively be the
biggest investment in public transportation infrastructure in the city since
the 2010 Winter Olympics!

Melbourne and Vancouver have long been considered comparable in many facets
(not least of all ‘liveability’), which in itself begs an important question:
given the comparability of Melbourne and Vancouver – and the similarities in
growing populations and transit infrastructure needs – should the concept of
transit referendums and tax increases be considered here?

Transit referendums and sales tax increases for transit
investment are not new concepts in North America. For example, in 2010 the
residents of San Francisco voted ‘yes’ (51 per cent to 49 per cent) to support an additional $10 a
year on the fee for vehicle registrations. This translated into an additional $5
million a year for street repairs, upgrades to reliability and mobility, and
enhanced pedestrian safety. Similarly, 54 per cent of the residents of Oklahoma
voted ‘yes’ in 2009 for a 1 per cent sales tax increase over seven years, which
raised $777 million for a new light rail system, commuter lines, transit hubs,
sidewalks and bicycle/walking trails.

Perhaps the most interesting is the 2008 case of Los Angeles
County Metropolitan Transit Agency (LACMTA) ‘Measure R’, which similarly
proposed a 0.5 per cent sales tax increase on each dollar of taxable sales within Los Angeles County for thirty
years in order to pay for transportation projects and improvements. 67.22 per
cent of Los Angelenos said yes to the proposal, which seeks to reverse the
trend of car-dependency within the county through transit infrastructure
projects such as a LAX rail connection, new subway lines (including the ‘Subway
to the Sea’ and new Green Line), freeway widening and implementation of carpool
lanes.

In Melbourne, recent discourse on transit infrastructure
investment has been closely entwined with political agendas as evidenced by the
recent proposal for the East-West Link. The fallout from this argument has
resulted in a dichotomy between public transport advocates (Doncaster Rail, new
rolling stock, airport connectivity etc.) and road infrastructure supporters.

Whichever view you take, the question at large always returns to value for money and foresight - as the East-West Link’s estimated project cost of $6-$8 billion equals could equally be applied to other transit projects across our region. Perhaps it is time to remove the politics from transit investment in Melbourne and adopt a bottom-up approach that returns power to the people through a referendum/plebiscite on the issue.

Although unprecedented in Australia, Vancouver’s recent
transit referendum and sales tax increase begs the question of whether the same
could work here. What do you think? Would you support an increase in tax if it
meant both having a direct say in transit investment as well as facilitating
tangible transit infrastructure provision?